The Only Way I Know
by rgs38
Summary: Post ITSOTG following Sam as he deals with the immediate fallout of Josh's injuries and some of his own. Follows cannon to a point but diverges a bit. Sam and ensemble with focus on Sam/Toby friendship. First WW story, please review!
1. Chapter 1

The Only Way I Know

_I very recently got into the West Wing and watched the entire series in a little over the month. Now I'm watching it again for, what I anticipate, will be many, many times; this may very well be among my favorite is my first fanfic outside of the Flashpoint fandom and though I have lots of ideas for West Wing stories, I'm not sure that they're worth writing. I'd love some feedback to see how I do on this one and see if I should keep writing. I (very obviously) don't own any of the characters here. Picks up in the first part of ISOTG._

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><p>The world abruptly emerged from darkness to chaos. There was a ringing in the air where gunshots just were, an eerie sort of quiet, just for an instant, before the screaming came back into focus. There were feet around him, running and shuffling, and he couldn't figure out how everything turned upside down. He felt, more than saw, a Secret Service agent leaning over him as he laid on the warm pavement, glass shards surrounding him.<p>

"Mr. Seaborn!" The agent yelled over the sounds around him. He turned his head and suddenly all the pain in his body came into abrupt focus. He couldn't identify where the pain was or what was worse, the pounding of his head here it hit the ground, where some shattered glass had fallen and penetrated the unprotected skin in the back and side of his neck, his aching shoulder that he had landed awkwardly on and now wondered if it was dislocated…he closed his eyes for a moment and took a breath to steady himself. The agent's hands were running down his body, looking for a bullet hole that Sam knew wasn't there. The thought jarred him immediately from his thoughts though as he shot up into a sitting position with some help from the agent.

"The president?" He demanded, his tone posing the question he didn't have the consciousness to form. The Agent, Jerry…or maybe Jamie, Sam couldn't remember and thinking hurt...there was too much to think about...The Agent paused and considered how much to disclose but he nodded.

"He's in the car, on the way to the White House. Zoey is alright too and we just got Mr. McGarry into a car." He spoke quickly while assessing the rest of the casualties and chaos around them. Sam was doing the same, though he was looking for his friends.

"Go, do your job." Sam offered as he got himself standing and rolled his shoulder around to test the joint. "I'm fine." The Agent nodded and jogged off in another direction, soon lost in the crowd. Sam used all of the will power he had to remain standing, remain focused on finding his friends and getting back to the White House. He had to fight a wave of intense dizziness that overcame him when he tried to take his first step but he stayed upright despite the tilt in the ground. He blinked away whatever spinning was overtaking him though as he saw CJ, only a few yards away, sitting on a police car with paramedic's hovering around her.

"Are you alright?" He asked, noticing for the first time the slight quiver in his voice. She didn't hear him though and he had to repeat the question and explain what he'd just heard from the Secret Service about the President being okay. He and CJ had just turned to find the others when he heard Toby shouting for help. His heart must have stopped for a moment. He'd never heard Toby sound like that and, before he knew what was going on, he was running towards him. He didn't know what could be wrong but it didn't stop him from pushing his way past bystanders and up a short staircase. He saw Toby kneel and catch Josh before his head hit the ground and Sam couldn't breathe for a minute.

The world slowed down as Toby and Josh both turned their eyes towards Sam and the slightly trailing CJ. Sam felt paralyzed. Blood had never made him queasy but in this moment he needed to vomit and cry and curl up in a ball all at the same time but none of that happened. CJ saw what was happening and reacted first, running off to physically drag a medic to their location. The Secret Service had also realized something was wrong and began to swarm their position. Sam didn't know how he got on his knees holding Josh's head in his lap as Toby applied pressure to his wound. Josh was trying to talk and Sam was trying to get him to save his energy, telling him not to say anything, that everything would be okay but before he knew it, he was being pushed out of the way by medics and agents and suddenly Toby was holding his arm forcefully, keeping him back. He didn't remember Toby dragging him to a car that immediately took off after the ambulance but in the car things became a little less groggy. No one spoke on the way to the hospital. They were all in shock and Josh didn't look good. Sam couldn't help but watch as Toby tried to get the blood off his hands.

When the car stopped, Sam tried to bound out of the car like Toby and CJ but his movements were clumsy. The adrenaline was messing with him but he knew he had to get close to his best friend. Everything was a blur moving through the corridors of the hospital. He heard Leo's voice stand out among the crowd but Josh's whispers weren't making any sense and he was giving the doctors a hard time moving around. He said the only thing he could think of to try and calm Josh down.

"You went to New Hampshire. We both did. You came and got me." And, at that, Sam was pushed away from the bed as the doctor spoke quickly about a chest tube. He and the rest of the Senior Staff ended up outside the room, looking in as the doctors and nurses worked frantically. It was only a few minutes before they pushed him out the doors and away, deeper into the hospital. It felt simultaneously like it had been ten seconds and ten hours since the gunshots sound. It felt like an decade since the morning's stresses, the news of the successful landing of the space shuttle. And now, in the confines of the waiting room, each person stuck in their own head, waiting for word on the President and on Josh, a minute felt like another passing eternity.

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><p><em>A shorter chapter than I usually post but I haven't written in quite a while so more of substance will come soon. Please let me know what you think! <em>


	2. Chapter 2

The Only Way I Know—Chapter 2

_I start to break from cannon a tiny bit here in timeline/who was where when but my goal is to get the characterization right. If I've done that, especially in my first go with these characters, I'll be happy. So please let me know how I'm doing!_

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><p>In the first hour of waiting there were a lot of calls to be made and comfort handed out by anyone and everyone. Every nurse who brought coffee, every time the First Lady came into the waiting room, any time Leo felt the need to voice his assurances on both the President's and Josh's strength and fighting spirit there were words their to take them each out of their own heads. But as the seconds turned into minutes and the minutes ticked into hour three there was nothing but silence trapping each staffer in their own mind, their own nightmares.<p>

The adrenaline had worn off and now the exhaustion and, surprisingly again, the nausea was hitting Sam. And the pain. He hated to complain, compared to everyone else he was like a toddler who rolled down a grassy hill but his body throbbed. Mrs. Bartlett had insisted on a nurse removing the glass shards that had not already been knocked out of his neck to make sure none embedded in his skin but that was the least of his pain. Things were somewhat foggy from the moments of the shooting but Sam knew that he tackled CJ to the ground and landed awkwardly on his shoulder but it was just a bad bruise. His side of his head was pounding and, though he'd taken the aspirin offered by the nurse, it hadn't helped in the slightest.

He needed to focus though. The President would be out of surgery soon and then, they needed to address the nation, the world. Leo was already back at the White House but CJ would definitely need to return if not the rest of the senior staff that was still walking. Sam stole glances at Toby, trying to read his face and his body language. It was astounding to him that, after all this time, he was able to clearly read only three of Toby's moods: "Get out of the way, I don't want to talk it out"; "I'm being sarcastic, of course I'm pissed"; and "This is right (and/or wrong) and no one will convince me otherwise." Sure, there had been kinder moments, moments of joviality moments of sincere appreciation and trust but those were so few and far between that Sam hadn't gotten a good gauge of what to look for yet. Tonight was definitely a wild card kind of night.

Toby hadn't said a word since thanking an aide who had made her way to the hospital for bringing him the extra shirt out of his office. As hard as he had tried, Josh's blood was still all over the sleeves and splattered on his shirt and he was obviously uncomfortable. His hands were folded in front of him and he hadn't really looked up, his eyes glazed as he was stuck in his head. Sam had to do something. He couldn't preform surgery, he couldn't catch the shooters or run the country or probably even leave the hospital without a secret service escort to rival the Vice President but he could write.

He had asked a nurse for a pad of paper and a pen and though for the first hour he tried to form thoughts he only ended up with crooked scribbling notations he eventually got in some kind of a headspace to form somewhat clear thoughts around what needed to be done. He needed to think and it was harder and harder as time went on and the constant pounding in his temples grew more intense and more rapid, in time with his heartbeat.

The door of the waiting room opened and everyone had the same collective thought: Donna. Oh god how they had forgotten to tell Donna. He was about to stand, to take her hand and sit her down and tell her gently but as he moved to push himself up a laser sharp pain hit him right behind his eyes, his face flying into his hands before he even knew that he was massaging his temples. To everyone else it must have looked like he was just dreading someone telling Donna the news but to him it was like he'd been hit with a baseball bat and was taking all the effort he had to keep himself upright. He only heard bits and pieces of the conversation as his sudden blinding pain calmed. He knew that it was Toby talking at least, and he sensed Donna still standing in disbelief before CJ moved closer to her and tried to comfort her.

He needed to be strong. Leo might be able to keep the country out of war (hopefully) from the situation room but someone needed to do Josh's job at this moment. Someone needed to be the clear voice of what to do and say when Leo couldn't. He needed to do Toby's job, 'craft the message' as they liked to call it. But what could the message even be at a time like this? The President is alive and the country is still okay for the moment? He shook his head briefly but rebounded in pain. He needed to say that…just better. He tried a few more sentences before finding one that expressed the sentiment while staying non-committal to basically everything else and ripped it out of his notebook before handing CJ her statement. He can tell that she's shaken, she's been shaken all night, but when she doesn't chide him and tell him that she didn't need a statement he knew even more clearly that she wasn't as okay as the show she would soon put on for the press.

And she did do rather well, considering the circumstances, considering that Sam could see moments where she was physically shaking getting off the small stage. He watched most of her briefings in the room next door to the waiting room that the Secret Service had set up with a secure phone line so they could try to work. He didn't need to watch. He knew the answers to the questions and knew that most of the press corps would at least be respectful of the fact that she was shot at five hours ago, even if they couldn't go easy on her. But, watching the briefings was an excuse to get out of that damned waiting room, get away from everyone for a moment and try his hardest to get away from the florescent lights that he thought were exacerbating his headache.

He knew that he'd hit his head fairly hard on the ground when he'd went down. He wasn't dumb, he knew that he was experiencing some form of symptoms of a concussion but, he argued to himself, he was also experiencing symptoms of his best friend going into hour six of his surgery for a gunshot wound to his chest, his boss (also the leader of the free world) just waking up from a surgery for a gunshot wound, and his best friends all being at the scene of some kind of terror attack. He was prepared to admit that he was not at his best but, of the people who the country was depending on to keep running tonight, he definitely was not the worst off. He had just returned to the waiting room and had said a few words to Mrs. Bartlett before an aide was asking for he and Toby in the other room.

Toby had regained a bit of his color in the past few hours though he still hadn't said more than a handful of words and he didn't seem to dread getting on the phone. CJ had needed him. Though he wasn't opposed to doing work he also wasn't exceptionally excited to leave the hospital. But, they needed a lawyer at this moment, not a speechwriter and Sam needed to talk to Nancy about the 25th amendment. His heart jumped for a minute as he had trouble recalling which amendment that was. He knew every word of the Constitution by heart so the delay in recall scared him for a moment but it came back to him as quickly as it left and soon he was volunteering to also talk with the Secret Service, not wanting to put too much on Toby for the moment. Toby insisted that he would do it and Sam didn't really have the energy to argue so, they went their separate ways; Sam to the White House, Toby to the Department of Treasury.

Sam grabbed his coat from the waiting room and checked to see if anyone needed anything before heading to the front of the hospital to the waiting car. The Secret Service agent opened the door for him but, as Sam lifted his foot to get into the backseat, his balance shifted abruptly and his foot caught the edge of the door. He felt himself falling again but the Secret Service agent steadied him. Sam gave him a warm smile as he saw the concerned face of the agent.

"I'm getting clumsier by the minute." He joked before getting himself in the back seat and closing his eyes immediately to suppress the wave of nausea that hit him suddenly.

"The White House, Mr. Seaborn?" The agent confirmed as he got into the drivers seat and pulled away from the hospital.

"The White House," he repeated. "I've got a lot of work to do."

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><p><em>More soon!<em>


	3. Chapter 3

The Only Way I Know—Chapter 3

He shouldn't have done the morning shows. He knew it was a pretty bad idea; he was exhausted, more shaken than he'd like to admit, his head pounded with every beat of his heart, and he felt sick in more ways than one. The dizziness had gotten worse. He was able to walk in a straight line, sure, but he hoped people didn't ask him too. When CJ came into his darkened office as he scribbled notes he was fully prepared to say no, that he could not fill in, but her face and voice and tone, almost pleading, convinced him in an instant. That was close to four in the morning. He'd spent the next five and a half hours in the Mural Room, hooked up to a microphone and always on a camera, bright lights shining directly in his face and every time he blinked it was like someone was stabbing from inside his brain and trying to escape through his eyeballs.

It was worth doing. It had definitely taken his mind off everything and he was happy it wasn't CJ who needed to be there but he wished everyone would just leave him alone so he could curl up on Toby's couch and grab a few hours of sleep before Toby got back. Toby hadn't been back to the White House yet and Sam was mildly worried about him. He knew that Toby was tracking down the Secret Service memos and trying to find an answer for the press but it was unlike him not to go to his office and have the people he needed come to him.

Sam splashed some cold water on his face in the bathroom near the Oval Office. The junior communications aide who had been assigned to managing the morning shows had mentioned that he seemed a little pale and had the makeup women redo…whatever it was she did…between every few shows. He was sweating but also shaking and when he held his hands out in front of him to scoop more water from the tap he thought he was seeing double a bit. He closed his eyes and took off his glasses, blinking rapidly and, when he looked back at his hands again, they were fine…he was fine.

He couldn't really account for the next few hours. He tried to sleep on Toby's couch for a while but the pain plus the slight fear that Toby would come in and find him sleeping there kept him awake. He wandered the halls for a bit but found the struggle of running into people and needing to answer questions was too much. Eventually he ended back up in his office, the lights off, the computer off, anything that made noise or emitted light was firmly shut down.

CJ had mentioned that Josh was about going to be taken off the bypass soon when they had crossed paths in the hall a while ago and Sam thought he heard Toby rustling around in his office; he must have returned for a file or something because Sam saw him moving around near the window that separated their offices. He knew that he wanted to go back to the hospital and wanted to check on Toby and wanted to be near his friends, it was just so hard to move right now. He tried to push himself up from where he was, his head resting on his arm on the desk, but everything felt heavy. It almost felt like he was tying to move through Jello as he used his arms to lift his upper body from his desk. Toby was in his doorway…saying something…something about going back to the hospital…Sam wanted to come with him, he remembered. He forced himself to his feet but apparently too quickly as he reached out to the desk to steady himself, a rush of dizziness and nausea hitting him harder than the whole night.

"Sam?" Toby asked cautiously as he took a half step towards his deputy. Sam looked up and took another step towards the door but it seemed his legs gave out as he fell.

Toby was two steps too late to catch Sam or cushion his fall and by the time he was on his knees next to his fallen friend and had gotten Sam faced towards him he could finally see his deputy for what seemed to be the first time that whole, long, night. His body was coated in a layer of cold sweat and Toby could just now see how pale Sam looked. He tried calling out to him, trying to wake him, not really sure what to do and feeling a far too terrifying sense of dread that this was the second time in twenty four hours that he held one of his closest friends in his arms and was helpless.

"Matt!" Toby bellowed into the hallway as a secret service agent came running into the office. Though he had initially questioned if the secret service's resources really needed to be spent protecting him, he was glad now for the support. "Call an ambulance." Matt nodded before speaking into his radio and moving to Sam's other side. He checked Sam's pulse and relayed to whoever was on the other end that it was fast and irregular.

Toby wasn't sure how long it was that he sat in that office holding Sam but it couldn't have been more than a few minutes before Mrs. Bartlett ran into the doorway trailed by her own, substantial, secret service detail.

"What happened?" She asked with a bit of urgency, looking at Toby as Matt moved out of her way.

"I…I don't know, ma'am." Toby spoke softly as she took Sam's shoulders and laid him on his side before checking his pulse and pupils. "I asked if he was going back to the hospital and he moved to get up and seemed…I don't know, unsteady and then he just passed out." Toby felt like there was more to say, felt like there had to be something else he had noticed. But he had been too stuck in his own head to care about anyone else. He had practically walked out of the Communications Bullpen without even checking on his deputy and if it wasn't for Ginger's glare that forced him to feel guilty…he didn't want to know what would have happened to Sam if he hadn't stopped in.

"His pupils are different sizes and sluggish," Mrs. Bartlett said to no one in particular before glancing at Toby. "did he hit his head when he fell?" Toby immediately knew the answer was no. Sam's arm and shoulder had taken the brunt of the impact from his fall, his glasses hadn't even fallen off his face until Mrs. Bartlett removed them. But something was sticking in his head.

"No…no, not here but…he complained of a headache at the hospital earlier and when I came in the lights were off and he seemed to be moving slowly." Mrs. Bartlett understood where Toby was going and started moving her hands around Sam's head looking for bumps.

"Ahhhhh!" Sam let out a gulping moan of pain as he shot up and away from Mrs. Bartlett's probing fingers but Toby's hand on his shoulder kept him from sitting fully up.

"Sam! Sam," Toby tried to get his attention and calm him down but saw him flinching. He lowered his voice before trying again. "Sam, you with us, buddy?" Sam groaned again in response and tried to raise his hand to his head but Mrs. Bartlett held it this time.

"Samuel." She said in an authoritative tone that made him squint his eyes open slightly. "Did you hit your head tonight during the shooting?" She asked very directly. There was some movement in the hallway as the medics arrived and the Secret Service cleared some furniture out of the room so they could get in.

"Y's ma'm" Sam mumbled and closed his eyes again.

"Sam, keep your eye open for me." Mrs. Bartlett said with some urgency, enough that Sam opened them just to slits. "What have you been feeling since you hit your head?" It took a moment before Sam said anything.

"Crappy, ma'am." He had the slightest ghost of a smile on his face as he said it and Toby felt himself relaxing ever so slightly. Mrs. Bartlett also smiled.

"I'm sure you have." She looked at the medics who seemed ready to transport him. "Sam, we're going to get you to the hospital and take a scan of your head. I think you have a rather serious concussion but nothing we can't fix." Abby assured him (and Toby, he looked like he needed a little assurance).

"I was heading there anyways." Sam mumbled again as a backboard was slid underneath his body and the Secret Service helped lift him onto a gurney. When Toby finally rose and got himself closer to Sam around the gaggle of medics and secret service agents, his friend's eyes were closed and he had passed out again.

"Does he have any allergies or medical conditions?" A voice rose from the group, a medic with a clipboard. Toby tried to respond but suddenly his throat was dry, the sound of his heart beat reverberating in his ears so loudly that everything else was a buzz. Did he really almost lose another young co-worker, another friend from the same senseless violence that had impacted so many lives not a day ago? Mrs. Bartlett was speaking now, medical terminology being thrown around but Toby found that he couldn't tune out that voice.

"…his BP is low and I'm pretty sure he's dehydrated to top it all off. Start a drip, I'm riding along." She grabbed Toby's arm firmly as they came to the front drive of the White House. "Toby." She said gently but with a degree of authority. "He's going to be fine. It's a bad concussion but it only got this bad because he didn't say anything." Her face softened a bit and her voice dropped, almost to a whisper, "This is nothing like what happened with Josh or Jed." Toby nodded, glad that he wasn't the only one thinking it.

He took a few deep breathes before nodding again, more finality in this one. The edges of his mouth moved into a nearly imperceptible but half-hearted smile. His voice wasn't filled with the normal volume or rage that usually accompanied his declarations, there was still doubt as he saw Abbey climb into the back of the ambulance and fear still gripped at his heart.

"When he wakes up, I'm going to kill him."

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><p>The first thing he noticed was the god forsaken beeping every second. It felt like every high pitched beat was penetrating his soul, stabbing through his eyes, gouging out his brain. He wanted nothing more than to make the noise stop so he could continue to sleep. He had been so exhausted, he still was. He didn't quite remember why though, or where he was, or what the beeping could be. He groaned as he tried to lift his left arm to swat at the sounds, hoping it would do something, even if he knew it was a fruitless effort.<p>

"Shut up…" He mumbled at nothing in particular as he moved to roll over. That was when things got confusing. The pain hit first, or at least it hit the hardest as even moving his head a millimeter sent shockwaves through the rest of his body. He also noticed that his right arm was strapped to the bed, of which he realized was not his own and was not Toby's couch, the last thing he remembered sleeping on. He started to panic, but only for a moment because when he opened his eyes even the dimmed lights sent a wave of nausea through him that he thought might finally win out (though the fact that he couldn't remember his last meal probably helped in this case).

"Calm down, Sam." It took a moment for him to recognize that someone else was in the room with him, took a moment for the blood to stop pounding in his ears long enough for him to realize who the voice belonged to.

"Toby…" He asked softly, opening his eyes barely a sliver just to see the silhouette of his boss. "What's going on?" He found a slightly more comfortable position and stayed as still as possible.

"You passed out in your office, Sam." Toby said with considerable softness that Sam didn't think he'd ever heard. He figured that he was keeping his voice down for Sam's benefit but there was something else in his voice, and edge of something he couldn't identify. Fear? Guilt? Sam was confused about it but there were a lot of questions to come first as the rest of the day came back to him.

"Josh?" His eyes shot open but he quickly closed them again and brought his free hand to his temples immediately.

"Calm down." Toby said a bit sternly as he moved his chair closer to Sam. "He's as good as can be expected right now. They removed the bullet, sutured the artery and his lung. He's gonna be in the hospital for a long time and he's gonna be out of commission for a while but Mrs. Bartlett says it's looking astoundingly good considering." Sam nodded almost imperceptible and he visibly relaxed.

"Don't you nod off on me, you idiot." Toby said sternly, raising his voice slightly. Sam opened his eyes again even though he didn't want to. "That's better, you've got a long line of people who both need to assure themselves you're okay and tell you how dumb you are." Sam groaned as Toby continued. "I would normally say that you're thick skulled and that's why you're so stubborn but the doctors might disagree so I'll just say you're thick." His voice was growing louder as he went, mostly out of habit but also out of anger. "What makes you think you can just walk around the White House with a serious concussion? We were sitting in a hospital for…I don't know, what? Eight hours? You couldn't just pull aside a nurse and tell her you hit your brain on the ground and you might need to be checked?"

"Toby…" Sam mumbled weakly, his eyes scrunched up in pain and his hand rubbing his temples again. "Please, keep going, but can you please just lower your voice?" He was being smart again, Toby thought, but he knew he was also in pain.

"Sam…" He didn't know when he had stood during his rant but he sat again and began to rub his own eyes. "Abbey said that your brain could have swelled, that there could have been some pretty serious damage, you could have needed surgery. Instead you get to stay here for a few days but…still, what made you act so idiotically that you didn't decide to give someone a call when you realized you weren't exactly at the top of your game?" Toby may have meant it rhetorically but Sam wanted to get his part in before the exhaustion overtook him again and he didn't have a say in the matter.

"I might not have been at the top of my game, but which one of us was?" He opened his eyes fully for the first time of the night and looked directly at Toby. "I was doing things the only way I knew how to. I was making sure that things were running, I was making sure that you and CJ and Donna didn't need to think about it, just for a few hours…it was worth it. I know I'm not always trusted to lead on senior staff, I'm the youngest, least experienced, all of that…but I've always been a great pinch hitter. You deserved to have a few hours tonight…last night, I guess…without having to think about a statement to the press." Sam's leaned back slightly into the pillow, happy to have said his piece and overjoyed at the prospect of some more sleep but he didn't seem so lucky.

"That wasn't your choice to make, Sam. I might have been a little caught up in it but if you had said that we needed to draft a statement I would have helped. CJ would have done the morning shows, someone else could have met with Nancy. You could have taken care of yourself before the need for the First Lady's medical intervention and an ambulance that scared the crap out of everyone."

" 'm sorry, Toby." Sam said weakly, almost taken again by sleep. He was sorry, he didn't mean to scare people and he didn't mean to let it go on this long but things got out of hand, as they often did at the White House.

"Nah, Sam…I'm sorry. I should have noticed twelve hours ago that there was something wrong with you. I should have asked you and CJ and Charlie directly if you were okay but…I couldn't…I wasn't all there in that moment and I appreciate that you took the initiative to help keep things running." There was a pause as a small smile fell onto Toby's face. "Do me a favor though, never do that again."

"Deal."

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><p><em>That's it. Not super happy with this one, think I made Toby too sappy at the end but working on the characters and would love feedback. I have some other ideas but working out if I have the timeenergy to write them right now. Thanks for reading and, if you like what I've written or have feedback, please leave a comment, they keep me going! _


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